


I’ll take you higher

by Sasha



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Broken Sherlock, Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, John Not Coping, M/M, Post TST, Pre-Johnlock, did I mentioned angst?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 20:34:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14528655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sasha/pseuds/Sasha
Summary: John is not there anymore. John’s not there and Sherlock doesn’t know how to go back to the way things were before.After Mary's death John refuses to see Sherlock, who does not know how to cope with his best friend's rejection. An old and dark friend comes back crawling in his life, pushing him down and under once again.





	I’ll take you higher

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_hopeless_existentialist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_hopeless_existentialist/gifts).



> Thank you so much the_hopeless_existentialist for the, as usual, amazing beta <3

John is not there anymore. John’s not there and Sherlock doesn’t know how to go back to the way things were before. Back to before Mike Stamford pushed open those doors, inviting John into the lab and into Sherlock’s life.

 

Sherlock lies on the sofa and waits. Waits for the nightmares to go away. Waits for dull cases that won’t dissipate the fog that has invaded his mind. Waits for the familiar steps to climb the stairs.

Sherlock walks in circles. Circles around the coffee table, the chairs, in front of the high windows. Circles in Regent’s Park, around the lake, around the bored ducks. Circles around Soho, passing again and again in front of Angelo’s, his feet tired and his fingers ice-cold.

Sherlock silently screams. Screams underwater, his hair lazily floating in the lukewarm water of the bathtub. Screams with his lips tight shut in the back of the cab bringing him back home from a crime scene. Screams through his clenched teeth when electricity runs wild under his skin and he can’t get it to stop.

 

When he finds Bliss again, he knows he won’t leave her for anything less than John. Bliss has not changed. She looks bad, she always has. She looks like a dirty mattress, broken windows, filth under his nails and flickers of dull light through tired eyelids. She smells bad, rotten and heavy, and once Sherlock allows her to come inside him he knows he’ll smell like her too. But Bliss allows him to breathe again, head deliciously empty and calm. She soothes the sound and the fury. He doesn’t lie on the sofa anymore. He stops walking in circles. The screams are no longer stuck in his throat.

Bliss is the only thing that matters now. And when she goes away he chases her, pushes her back into his veins and breathes again.

 

* * *

 

Making Bliss happy is the most important thing. When she is happy she lets him think, she lets his mind work and the work is everything. Without the work Sherlock does not exist. Without the work his mind crumbles in on itself trying to go higher and higher.

Sometimes he thinks about these years without Bliss. It’s hard to remember how he could live and breathe and work and  _ be  _ without her. But at that time he had had John.

 

Bliss does not like it when he thinks of John and how she was not needed when he was there. She whispers in his head, relentlessly, like water slipping through desperately clenched fingers. She inexorably slithers into his mind, leaving a burning path through his skull, running under his skin, igniting his nerves and lodging herself in his throat.

She makes him stumble to his knees when she feels forgotten, when he has not fed her in a while. He arches, curves, bends against the cold tiles of the bathroom, on the dusty carpet in the living room where a chair used to be, in his dirty sheets, reeking of sweat and desperation. She makes his stomach concave and clench, his throat a scorching tunnel of pain as he retches and gags, insides empty of all but bitter bile.

He pushes her back into his veins and then when the pain goes away, her voice is the only thing left for a while.

 

_ See how much better you feel when I am here, inside you. _

  
  


* * *

  
  


John comes back.

 

He pops up suddenly at the door one afternoon, ringing the shrill bell. Sherlock looks up from the coffee table where he is shuffling through old newspapers, looking for a clue that keeps eluding him. John’s usual footsteps - no, not usual anymore, the old ones, the ones he sometimes dreams of, but they are real now, right? Yes, yes they are - climbing up the stairs. Sherlock has time to school his features in vague disinterest and slip on a dressing gown to hide the marks - red blue purple yellow green - on his forearms.

 

John does not knock, he pushes the door open and stands there, his eyes on Sherlock. His hand won’t let go of the handle. Sherlock drinks him in before he can stop himself.

Has not shaved this morning, unironed shirt poorly hidden beneath one of his old jumpers - the one with a defect in the wool pattern under the left armpit - something like porridge, or some other mush, left a crust on his trousers - on the outside of his left thigh, wiped his hand without thinking at breakfast, messy breakfast, Rosie must be learning to eat by herself now - pale skin looking taut across his cheeks, dark circles around his eyes, lips tight - unhappy, stressed out, frustrated, a ‘new widower with a baby at home’ face.

John stares back at him for a long minute, he then seems to deflate and half turns back towards the stairs.

 

“I’ll be back in a couple hours with Rosie if that’s alright with you.”

 

Sherlock can’t utter a word. He makes a weird little head shake when John glances back at him after a beat of silence.

 

“Try to make the living room at least  _ look  _ like it would be safe for a baby.”

 

He gets down the stairs and the front door shuts behind him and Sherlock hasn’t moved.

 

* * *

 

 

When John comes back with Rosie a few hours later Sherlock is waiting for them in the slightly less messy living room. He even found Mrs Hudson’s old hoover for the carpet under the coffee table. When he brought it back downstairs, she slips a box of cookies into his hands. It lies on the table now waiting, like him, for John to come back.

 

When they appear in the doorway, John looks even grimmer than before, whereas Rosie is all smiles and babbles. He drops her on the carpet and himself in Sherlock’s chair, with a weary look in his eyes.

Sherlock sits on the carpet next to Rosie and pushes the box of cookies towards her. She claps happily, her hands on the table and takes one with her clumsy little fingers. As Sherlock watches her munch around the cookie, leaving crumbs everywhere on the table, carpet and wooden floor, John gets up with a huff and goes to the kitchen to make some tea.

 

When he comes back to set two cups on the table, Rosie has left her half eaten cookie on a wayward book and is crawling on Sherlock’s long legs to pull at his grown out curls. The younger man gently tickles her and the little girl’s laughter fills the room.

 

As John settles himself back in the chair, he can’t turn his eyes away from where Rosie’s hand has tugged on Sherlock’s dressing gown sleeve. The marks on his pale skin, a display of colour, made John’s stomach clench. His daughter grips the too thin limbs, pushing herself up and giggling as Sherlock tries his best to keep her from falling down. His long hands look enormous around her round body, knuckles standing out and wrists a bundle of bones, veins and tendons with barely anything else underneath the almost translucent skin.

Sherlock smiles at her, lips dry and cracked, and his cheekbones seem to almost cut right through his skin. It breaks John’s heart a little more. He buries his face in his hands and lets silent tears wet his face and palms.

 

When he looks up again Sherlock’s eyes are on him, pupils too small for the afternoon light flooding the living room.

 

“I could leave Rosie with your parents for a while.”

 

He can only whisper the words, voice too tight to speak louder.

 

“Until you… until things are better.”

 

Sherlock’s eyes jump between his own, left and right and left and right, surprise and hope blossoming on his pale face, deducing if John is lying, if his raw honesty is still the one he remembers.

 

“ Would you…” Sherlock mumbles, and can’t finish the sentence. Rosie has tucked herself between his ratty t-shirt and the soft dressing gown, she is sucking her thumb while eyeing her dad from Sherlock’s embrace.

 

John nods a few times, before clearing his throat and finding his voice again.

 

“I will stay with you.”

 

Sherlock’s adam apple bobs nervously, his fingers mindlessly tugging on his sleeve.

 

“Until…?”

 

John’s smile looks like he is crying, small and fragile as he spoke.

 

“I will stay with you, Sherlock.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Title from “Should Be Higher” by Depeche Mode]
> 
> I'm on tumblr obsessing over everything Sherlock related, come and say hi thefrenchweirdone.tumblr.com :)


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